Known for humorous ditties like The Only Dyke at the Open Mic, Kate Reid sets her sights on non-traditional families on her new album Queer Across Canada. The Ontario-born, Vancouver-based Reid, who has an education degree at the University of B.C. and has worked with youth for the last 20 years, interviewed more than 70 people as part of research for the project. The 42-year-old singer lives in the Westside with her partner and two cats.

Q: You interviewed over 70 people for this album.

A: Yes, 74 people, including families. The youngest I interviewed was a four-year-old, and then her moms of course. The oldest person was probably in their 60s. But the oldest child of queer parents was a 39-year-old woman. So quite a range of people.

Q: Were there any direct quotes from those interviews that made it into the lyrics?

A: Yeah. I interviewed a couple of young men, their dad came out after having been married to a woman. They separated and a few years later there was going to be a family meeting and the one son told me he remembers thinking, “What could this meeting be about — are they getting back together, did someone die, maybe dad’s gay.” Then he thought, “No no, he’s not cool enough to be gay. He’s this normal person, not like the gay guys I see on TV.” And that phrase “he’s not cool enough to be gay” really stuck with me, so I built a song around that (Cool Enough to Be Gay).

Q: Is this the first time you did research before making a record?

A: Yes. I didn’t grow up in a queer family so I didn’t know what it was like to have queer parents. I really wanted to capture that. I usually write songs about my life, and my other albums have been more about my experiences. But I really felt like I wanted to give kids and youth a voice about what it’s like to have queer parents. When I became part of my partner’s family — she has two children from a previous marriage with a woman — we’d have these conversations about the challenges they face at school with having two lesbian moms. The son was teased about it and the daughter doesn’t really talk about it. It made me think, There are no songs out there that speak to kids who have two mommies or two dads versus a mom and dad.

Q: It seems there aren’t a lot of songs out there for kids coming from that experience.

A: It was important for me to give voice to that. Kids growing up in queer families have to deal with homophobia too, and in ways I never thought about before. They just come into it, and all of a sudden they have to face this stuff. It raises all these questions. Our son talked about how he was teased for having two moms, and they’d say “how come you don’t have a dad?” And he would say “I have dad, I have a donor dad.” And the kids would tease him, calling it a “doughnut dad.” (laughs).

Q: Bullying has become a hot-button topic. As an educator, why do you think it’s taken this long for it be outed as a societal problem?

A: People have been afraid to address it. A lot of the time we don’t know how to address that kind of thing, we don’t have the tools to deal with it, to follow up and even support victims. A lot of that’s happening now; school boards are figuring out how to deal with these things. When I was in high school, people just lived with it. It was just part of people’s lives. There’s so much of it in the world. We work so hard with our kids on the issue but they see adults bullying each other. It’s not like the adult world is a good model for anti-bullying.

Q: You recently tweeted you’re excited about the Vancouver Folk Festival because of Natalie Maines.

A: Yeah, she’s awesome. I’m a Dixie Chicks fan, I’m a Natalie Maines fan. I loved what they did with that album (2006’s Taking the Long Way), how they turned that whole situation with that comment she made about Bush (“We’re ashamed that the President of the United States is from Texas”), how they turned that around. They made this incredible album and then got five Grammys for it. I loved how she did what she felt. So I’m excited to go see her.